Quit using Dex-Cool

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Dex-Cool ate the intake gasket in my GMC Yukon. It also ate the oil cooler in my wife's Saturn V6. Both cars have green antifreeze in them now and have a lot more miles than when they ran with the orange junk. We'll be buying a new SUV next month and I'll be changing antifreeze but quick.




Dex had zero to do with your yukons intake gaskets failing. I can guess the plastic carrier cracked where the silicon seal was imprinted and caused it to shift. I have changed over 5 sets of these gaskets on different vehicles and it is usually the same thing everytime. Now and then you actually get a failure at the intake valve area and use oil like mad.

Go ahead and change the anti-freeze but it is my guess you will void the warranty on the cooling system.

Orange junk...No it is like perfom preventive maintenance. With the intake gaskets that was bad engineering on GM's part.

If Dex is so bad how do you explain the thousands of vehicles on the road with zero problems?
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How do you explain the oil cooler on the Saturn? The plastic was not cracked. The silicone seal around the water port was worn away. I changed it myself. I've put 120,ooo more miles on the truck with that gasket in place and no more problem. I change coolant in both vehicles every fall.
 
" That and bad design. As the picture displays the carrier split at the port. This gasket was torqued to Fel-Pro specs 2.5 years ago. Thes gaskets replace the OEM. "

So is this a picture of a Fel Pro gasket ?
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And if so , why did it fail after 2.5 years ?
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NYE , BC , SELF , forum at large ,
How about we all agree .......
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,that we could save a little bandwidth and prevent a lot of confusion if we include some stuff like vehicle and/or engine model year , engine size and/or code and when needed , other stuff like vehicle model , mileage etc .
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So NYE ,
is this a honda v6 ? and if you don't mind , on the Yukon engine size and year ?
 
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My Yukon is a 98 with a Vortec 5.7. At the time of gasket failure, it had about 75,000 miles on it. The front driver's side corner was seeping coolant out. The plastic was bot cracked, oil was not getting into the port. I swapped it with a Fel Pro gasket and now I have 183,000 miles.
The Saturn is a 2001 with the european 3.1 V6. It's an overhead cam engine with a liquid to liquid oil cooler between the heads. The cooler failed at 60,000 miles, I bypassed it, installed an air to oil cooler and now that car has 95,000 on it. This engine is a total pain to care for and the dealer chuckled when I told the service manager what engine was in the car.
 
3 Suburbans, 1 YukonXL, 4 GM 7.4L Merc engines all on Dex-Cool for years...never a problem. I siphon off a quart every year and replace it with new. I also add the prestone anti-rust additive every 2 years. Easy peasy.
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Know what? It's a free country and if I refuse to use Dex Cool, then dammit I can put green antifreeze in my cars. I don't fix cars for a living, so I'm not forcing my feelings on any innocent people.
 
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" That and bad design. As the picture displays the carrier split at the port. This gasket was torqued to Fel-Pro specs 2.5 years ago. Thes gaskets replace the OEM. "

So is this a picture of a Fel Pro gasket ?
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And if so , why did it fail after 2.5 years ?
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You know if I knew why I would have made my own gaskets and retired off the profits.. The stock GM gaskets were similar in appearance.
 
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Know what? It's a free country and if I refuse to use Dex Cool, then dammit I can put green antifreeze in my cars. I don't fix cars for a living, so I'm not forcing my feelings on any innocent people.




Geez, a little hostile aren't we?
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My Yukon is a 98 with a Vortec 5.7. At the time of gasket failure, it had about 75,000 miles on it. The front driver's side corner was seeping coolant out. The plastic was bot cracked, oil was not getting into the port. I swapped it with a Fel Pro gasket and now I have 183,000 miles.
The Saturn is a 2001 with the european 3.1 V6. It's an overhead cam engine with a liquid to liquid oil cooler between the heads. The cooler failed at 60,000 miles, I bypassed it, installed an air to oil cooler and now that car has 95,000 on it. This engine is a total pain to care for and the dealer chuckled when I told the service manager what engine was in the car.




I do all my own work and the engine is very easy compared to my daughters 92 Lumina z-34. I wil take my 97 GMC anyday.
Your dealer sounds like a jerk to me.
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NYE,
Your 2002 ?? ( with an initial release date of mid 2002 ?? } Saturn Vue has a TSB for " New oil Cooler Cover Sealant " ( Date 1 MAY 2002 which covers it - it really wasn't your coolant ( bad/wrong sealant ) .
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As to the Yukon/your year/engine , so far I haven't found anything like that problem - even remotely
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so must have been service/component/system problem of another sort . Sounds like it got hot .
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Same internal construction and materials ? Good Pic BTW .
Do you know what that came off of ? ( I want to file under...? is why I'm asking ) .
 
I've found an awful lot of times ( not always ) that something else is going on if you have installed #2 correctly and don't have a substandard/defective second time around gasket . 2.5 Years isn't even close .
 
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3 Suburbans, 1 YukonXL, 4 GM 7.4L Merc engines all on Dex-Cool for years...never a problem. I siphon off a quart every year and replace it with new. I also add the prestone anti-rust additive every 2 years. Easy peasy.
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Oops, forgot to add my message to the quote from KBFXDLI. I also siphon roughly 3.5 litres of Dexcool out of the rad of our 1997 3.1 L Lumina (the rad plug won't come out) and clean the overflow tank. I do this every 1 or 1.5 years. Never had any coolant related problems, car has 78,00 km on it. I also drain the rad (via drain plug) on my 1999 4.8 L Silverado (187,000 km) every 2 years. Coolant from both vehicles comes out orange/pink and clear. Everyone has their own crazy methods. This one keeps the dreaded Dexcool somewhat "fresh" and re-plenished from what I have read on this site. Neither vehicle has ever seen a cooling system flush.
 
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NYE,
Your 2002 ?? ( with an initial release date of mid 2002 ?? } Saturn Vue has a TSB for " New oil Cooler Cover Sealant " ( Date 1 MAY 2002 which covers it - it really wasn't your coolant ( bad/wrong sealant ) .
smile.gif


As to the Yukon/your year/engine , so far I haven't found anything like that problem - even remotely
dunno.gif
so must have been service/component/system problem of another sort . Sounds like it got hot .
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cheers.gif




The cooler core itself was porous. it wasn't any seal.
 
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NYE,
Your 2002 ?? ( with an initial release date of mid 2002 ?? } Saturn Vue has a TSB for " New oil Cooler Cover Sealant " ( Date 1 MAY 2002 which covers it - it really wasn't your coolant ( bad/wrong sealant ) .
smile.gif


As to the Yukon/your year/engine , so far I haven't found anything like that problem - even remotely
dunno.gif
so must have been service/component/system problem of another sort . Sounds like it got hot .
dunno.gif
cheers.gif





My '98 K1500 with the 5.7L vortech (same engine as a '97 Yukon unless the yukon had the 4.3) had LIM gasket failure. When I was reading chev truck bulletin boards at the time, it seemed like 3/4 of owners were having this same problem (and the other 1/4 just didn't know it).

It was such a big problem, there were TSB's posted, strategies for getting GM to fix them outside warranty, and DIY's of how to do it if you couldn't get a remedy from GM.
 
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Know what? It's a free country and if I refuse to use Dex Cool, then dammit I can put green antifreeze in my cars. I don't fix cars for a living, so I'm not forcing my feelings on any innocent people.




Go for it! You can do it! You Da'man!
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NYE,
Your 2002 ?? ( with an initial release date of mid 2002 ?? } Saturn Vue has a TSB for " New oil Cooler Cover Sealant " ( Date 1 MAY 2002 which covers it - it really wasn't your coolant ( bad/wrong sealant ) .
smile.gif

It's NOT a Vue. It's an L300 sedan. It has a 3.1 litre V6 that I would guess came from england because they keep calling it the European V6. They no longer use it. I can only imagine because it requires a degree to take care of it. The oil cooler is inside the engine immersed in coolant. It failed at the core. One day, suddenly, oil started coming out the coolant cap. I searched for an oil cooler, followed the lines and found it under the intake manifold. I used to service Cat, Cummins and Detroit Diesel generators. I've seen dozens of failed oil coolers from engines that didn't receive proper coolant care. I fabricated plugs to seal the block and added an external cooler because the replacement was 600 bucks and I don't like that car that much.

As to the Yukon/your year/engine , so far I haven't found anything like that problem - even remotely
dunno.gif
so must have been service/component/system problem of another sort . Sounds like it got hot .
dunno.gif
cheers.gif



 
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